Category: New York City

American world? Sure. This week we feature music from artists who, although based in the US, make music that breaks boundaries and feels like it’s built from colorful, jagged pieces of the whole world.

Susan Krebs & the Soaring Sextet, Jazz Aviary

A jazz concept album about birds – not Charlie Parker, but actual birds – sounds potentially pretentious, or precious, or both. But this disc, from singer Susan Krebs, musical director-pianist Rich Eames, and some ace sidemen, is actually a sweet, sincere, unprepossessing, and lovely set of bird-themed tunes. Most of the tracks could stand alone, but the set also flows together like a flock of – I don’t know – some kind of flocking bird.

There are well-known songs, like “Skylark,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” and, in a nod to Bird with a capital B, “Ornithology.” There are more obscure songs, like Abbey Lincoln’s “Bird Alone” and Krebs and Eames’s original, meditative tune “The Peace of Wild Things,” which faintly echoes “‘Round Midnight” and features some beautiful flute playing by Rob Lackart. And there are surprises, like Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending,” which the musicians give a reverential, meditative treatment, aided by a string section.

A few tracks feel a little icy and overly careful, but Krebs and Co. hit the mark far more often. One of my favorites is their epic take on Dave Brubeck’s “Strange Meadowlark.” Another is “Bob White” with its herky-jerky rhythms. Krebs is not the most powerful or adventuresome vocalist; she sings with what I think of as a shy artistry with a touch of humor. The latter comes into play, for example, in Hoagy Carmichael’s “Baltimore Oriole,” and in the medley of roots and pop (non-jazz) standards that starts with Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” My biggest beef with jazz vocalists is that they frequently lack a sense of fun. Not so here. The “twinkle” in Krebs’s delivery is an important part of this disc’s appeal. So are the little throwaways – quotes from poems, recorded bird sounds, percussion sound effects – that dot the tracks.

Sample all tracks and purchase the CD at CD Baby.

One World, Share My Love

Here’s a band that wears its heart on its sleeve. One World’s new disc contains an hour of jazzy Latin adult contemporary tracks, touched by rock and funk and soft pop, most sung in English. It’s all very smooth, but loaded with good cheer, and has plenty of melodic hooks and rhythmic bounce to keep you on your toes. There are sad moods (“She Longed For His Love”), but One World’s one world is one world without anger and meanness. Check out some sample tracks from this great party record.

N-Side, Just a broke brotha’ tryin’ to come up!

It’s easy to dig jazz poet N-Side. He’s chill. He’s solid. He speaks his poems as neither an angry young man nor a self-satisfied old one, but as a literary artist. As a result he makes you really pay attention to his lyrics. “People wait for me to get fed up, frustrated – hate-filled with aggression, preparing myself to throw down. / But those folks rich in spirit have taught me force isn’t needed to keep this prize called knowledge around.” N’s poems – some rhyming, some more freeflowing and prosy, but all engaged with the complete human experience – are backed by Ricardo Love’s nu-soul grooves and organic hip-hop beats decorated with small splashes of jazz. (Two tracks are by Russell Case.)

The tracks rest in easy grooves that match the poet’s calm intensity as he talks to people we can’t see or hear but whom he makes us envision clearly. “Someone said… they had no culture here and neither did I… ‘Can you lay claim to an original thought of your own?’ / I loaded up with all the names that I was about to call him: sellout, racist, double agent, cultural perpetrator, antebellum negro, no-risk vicarious activist… but I didn’t say a word… finally I… realized once again, I was talking to myself. / Hopefully these type of conversations will change, and not be taken so personally.”

Deep and useful stuff. Sample all tracks and purchase the CD at CD Baby.

Finally, here’s a pic of Stratospheerius, the “full-on electro-fiddle-trip-funk” band whose CD I reviewed back in July. They rocked the legendary Bitter End last night with an all-too-short early set.

It’s good to know that some things, like the Bitter End’s tiny bathrooms, never change. But electric six-string violinist Joe Deninzon (who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia) leads this most excellent band through some serious rhythmic changes. Is it prog-rock? Jazz fusion? A jam band? Ask the portraits of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell on the walls, I don’t know. A little of each maybe. All I know is it’s kickass. They closed the set with the instrumental “Heavy Shtettle II: Heavier Shtettle.” I said kickass, right?

Here’s a bonus shot of drummer Lucianna Padmore in action. She is an even more awesome musician in person than on CD.

I love Kenny’s Castaways. It’s always been sort of the Bitter End’s neglected little brother, but from the standpoint of actually hearing music, it’s better laid out, and the atmosphere and decor are just classic.

The building dates from the 1820s. Round about 1890, when it was known as The Slide, one of the papers called it “the wickedest place in New York.” Well, in the Giuliani-Bloomberg era there’s not too much wickedness to be had, at least not in touristy areas like Bleecker Street, but you can feel the history when you walk into the bar, musical and otherwise. From Aerosmith to The Smithereens, the list of acts who played at Kenny’s Castaways when just starting out reads like a Who’s Who of rock royalty. Bruce Springsteen’s first NYC gigs with the E Street Band were at Kenny’s.

Seems every time I go in there, whether to play a gig with my band or to catch another act, if it’s early enough I see a lone guitar guy singing folk songs to practically nobody. That’s the 7 PM hour, before the bands show up with their hangers-on, before the tourists wander in, even before most of the regulars who hang out at the bar up front arrive. Well, tonight was my turn to be that guy. You can see from my expression that I was having a good time. Didn’t matter that only a few people came (my dad, my aunt, my girlfriend, and a buddy from work, to be exact.)

I felt bad for the duo that played after me – they’d come all the way from Philadelphia and nobody was there to see them (as opposed to me, who might have a thin crowd but gets to walk home.) We couldn’t even hang out to watch them because I hadn’t had dinner, and much as I like to support other musicians, the stomach always wins.

But hey, that’s rock and roll – you gotta play to an empty room sometimes. For a long time, sometimes. Years, sometimes. Till you die, sometimes. The next Whisperado gig is at R Bar the day after Christmas, when we’ll have the whole band and be celebrating our fifth bandiversary. Be there or forever regret it!

The Blender Theater at Gramercy turns out to be a pretty good place to see a rock show. You can hear the vocals, and the whole mix isn’t nightmarishly loud… and that’s as much as I hope for from one of these old converted theaters. And you can sit! Although the shows are technically SRO, the seats in the former balcony have been retained. Though there isn’t much leg room, any seats are a blessing when you’re too decrepit to stand for a three or four hour rock show.

After Michael Tolcher opened the show with a solid acoustic solo set, the The Alternate Routes took the stage. They’re one of my favorite new bands, and although they strayed a few times from their smooth mix of alt-rock and power pop by hitting us with a couple of hardheaded country-ish numbers and maybe a few bars more jamming than were necessary for their short set, they didn’t disappoint.

The Alternate Routes, Dec. 15 2008

Then the headliners, The Clarks, took the stage.

The Clarks, Dec. 15 2008

These guys are consummate pros. One song flows right into another. They look like they’ve been doing this and loving it all their adult lives, which they have. A bonus was their inspiring cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The River,” to which they gave a gently swinging beat.

Altogether a good night at the not-movies. And we even got to sit down. Kinda like old times – going to see a rock show, walking around between sets, buying a beer, sitting back down. Only now, there’s no actual smoke allowed, so they fill the hall with some kind of haze. I guess it’s to make the lighting effects look cooler, but what it does it take me back to the days when you could smoke – pretty much anything – at an indoor rock show, and as long as you didn’t set fire to anything or try to jump on the stage, nobody would give you a second look (or smell).

People say making it in comedy is even tougher than making it in music. Evidence appeared the other day when a series of comedians performed at the Duplex for five minutes each. Some were terrible, some mediocre, a few quite good. Here’s D’yan, one of the good ones, trying out a new number with her “Jew-kelele”:

Thing I noticed, though, was how hardly any of the comedians supported each other. As each one went on, others left the club, until for the last couple of performers there was practically no one in the audience. Much of the evening was downright depressing.

Music’s different. Trying to keep a band going, promoting the gigs, making promoters and club owners happy, maintaining momentum when you’re getting little recognition and no remuneration, all while being creative – those are difficult tasks, but bands are usually nice to each other and can often stick around and appreciate the music of the act that went on before them (or will go on after). Also, bands themselves are social entities. Even on the solo singer-songwriter scene, people at least clap for each other. Here’s a band.

That’s Elisa Peimer rocking at the Underscore. (On the left is Meg Braun, with Paul Cabri on electric guitar.)

Yup, I think I’ll save my funny business for home. Plenty of stubbed toes, splinters, and cabinet-door head trauma to be had here, thank you very much. Hey – maybe I’ll write a song about it. And when you listen to it, I promise I won’t bang you over the head with a guilt complex if you don’t laugh.

When I was in high school, in a pleasant but sleepy suburb of New York City, my friend Eugenia was THE COOLEST.

One of the many reasons was her cool, mysterious extra life, where she’d go into the city – we all did that – but she’d go to the Duplex, “New York’s Legendary Piano Bar,” where all kinds of cool, mysterious people with cool, mysterious lifestyles drank and sang uncool, not very mysterious show tunes.

Now I’ll admit it: mumblety-mumble years later, although I’ve lived in New York and environs most of my life, I’d never been to the Dupe. Until last night, that is, thanks to Susan Gregory’s birthday party, which featured all the cookies you could eat. Mmm… cookies.

New York City can’t boast 1,000 years of history, but it’s not hard to find ancient music within its walls. Yesterday I caught the Ivory Consort‘s CD Release concert at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, where this beatific-looking dude keeps watch outside.

The present building dates from the late 18th century, but Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Amsterdam, was buried in 1678 on the site, under the earlier chapel. I don’t know what he would have thought of the music being played upstairs. The Ivory Consort presented a program of Arabic, Christian, and Jewish music from what is now Spain and southern France in the 12th century and thereabouts. What the Dutch colonists were listening to in the 17th century, I have no idea (if anyone knows, please enlighten).

One of the cool things about the Ivory Consort is that, unlike some early music groups, the members have colorful personalities. You might think of them the way we used to think of our favorite rock bands. Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Who – these weren’t just groups, they were made up of distinct personalities who were, as individuals, almost as important to our enjoyment of the band as the overall sound. Singer-viellist Margo Grib manges to slither while standing in one spot – she’s like an operatic, grown-up Shakira (but with a much lovelier voice). Group director Jay Elfenbein is the avuncular, slightly goofball spokesman, a low-key Peter Schickele. Oud player Haig Manoukian is the star soloist; Percussionist-vocalist Rex Benincasa howls in Arabic like a musical Allen Ginsburg; Daphna Mor swings her red tresses while sexily blowing through a variety of tubes with holes in them; Dennis Cinelli is the “quiet” one, calmly playing the saz, gittern, and mandora while observing the others’ antics with a glint in his eye.

Walking home, I snapped this picture down 11st St. from the front of Webster Hall, the historic nightclub that’s soon to be given official Landmark status by the city. I thought this was a nice shot, with the 19th century architectural detail, the 21st century bands on the marquee, and the spire of Grace Church in the background. Grace Church was designed by James Renwick, Jr., who was later responsible for St. Patrick’s Cathedral uptown, and the Smithsonian Institution castle in Washington DC.

A gaggle (a phalanx? a castleful? a stupefaction?) of New York City musical royalty (and some who should be) swirled through Gizzi’s Coffeehouse this evening. I went to see Leo (pictured), who, accompanied by the fine artist-guitarist Amura, delivered an intense and energetic batch of socially conscious, playful, powerful, rough-folk songs of his own cockeyed and cantankerous devising. In attendance, along with your humble correspondent: songwriting legends Bobby Stewart and Elisa Peimer, and, performing after Leo, NYC violin legend Deni Bonet, who not too long ago lent her talents to a Bobby Stewart recording on which I also appeared.

Deni performed backed by guitarist extraordinaire David Patterson, who had just finished a recording session with Halley DeVestern, and who had backed up jazz-pop vocalist Cybele Kaufman at one of my recent Soul of the Blues shows. David P. also appeared on the David Sasscer album, which, by pure coincidence – as I’d never heard of Sasscer until his publicist sent me his new CD recently – I’m reviewing right now for my Indie Round-Up column this week.

Got that? There’ll be a test tomorrow.